Commenting, Anonymous, No Reply and Open ID...

Ok, sorry for the long title, but I knew one of those things might grab you and they are all in this post.

We all love comments on our blog, but there are some issues...

• word verification is ridiculous now...can't read the word, takes several times, people give up
• subscribing to email comments
• what comment form box do we use at the end of our posts
• who is allowed to leave a comment
• if you allow anonymous you need the word verification, because you will get spammed to death with 50 emails a day trying to sell you Viagra and nude celebrity photos LOL !! Not kidding on that either. I got them EVERY day. I just turned off Anonymous users because of it. My choice was No Word Verification with No Anonymous Users or Yes to Word Verification and Yes to Anonymous. We all hate the verification now, so that's my only choice.
• the dreaded "NO REPLY". I think this is my goal in life to rid the blogging world of No Replies!! What is "no reply" you ask? Here's a quick explanation. You have a blogger account, which you think has an email address attached to it. You read all your favorite blogs and leave comments every where, hoping someone will respond back to your comment. That blog author receives your comment in her inbox of her email and wants to respond, but your address is "No Reply"...no email address. How do you fix this. CLICK HERE for a quick tutorial on the simple fix. Even if you THINK your address is there, PLEASE check any way!!

Here is my fix for all the issues on my blog...we'll see how this goes once you read this post.

Before I start, I just want to send a suggestion to Blogger. Just have a spot in the comment section where people can type in their name and email address to leave a comment. Done!! Seems simple, but there must be a reason for it all

I want everyone to have a chance to comment. I know most people lurk and browse around, but if you do want to leave a comment, it shouldn't be a hassle. If you don't have a blogger account, most people leave a comment under Anonymous. The problem with that is, to block spam (garbage email from bad websites uses Anonymous to send things) we have to put Word Verification on. That is off for me now, so no anonymous.

Here is how to change those features.

Go to your dashboard and click SETTINGS...

Click on COMMENTS...

Now click the dot next to REGISTERED USERS (the red circled item below in the picture). This allows all Google, Live Journal, Typepad, Word Press AIM and Open ID.

I have a further explanation below of what OPEN ID is. This could help my Anonymous friends.

Now to turn off Word Verification just scroll down and check NO.

Another option is where to have your Comment Box show up in your post. I've changed mine after having a conversation with Debbie from Jerusalem Notes: Fiberwork by Debbie. Click Here to visit her great blog.

Debbie likes to "subscribe to comments". That means if she likes the conversations that are happening on a particular post, she can subscribe to that particular post of comments. She is then sent all the comments from that post. That way she doesn't have to keep going back to the post to see what everyone after her is saying.

Blogger had that feature on all types of comment boxes, but it seems it's only on the "Embedded Below the Post" one. See it circles below?

When your comment box is embedded below the post, there is an area to click on, on the bottom right that says..."subscribe by email"

Ok, last topic is OPEN ID instead of being ANONYMOUS!!

If you CLICK HERE, you can go to the Open ID website and read about it. Here is a quote from the site

"OpenID allows you to use an existing account to sign in to multiple websites, without needing to create new passwords."

On this page, you can see how to get an Open ID, use one you may already have, or how you can add the Open ID feature to a website you have yourself. However, Blogger already allows Open ID, so it's perfect..

Here are some of the websites that you may already have an account with that you can use to comment on a blog under the OpenID section.

Click here to see how to log in with an Open ID...

Ok, I know this was a lot of info, but it had to go into one post, because it all goes together.

Hope this will help some of you out there!

Have a great day,
~Karen~